Peek Performance: March 8th Event [Event discussion begins on p6!]

[THT]

The biggest red flag for me with all these conflicting and overlapping rumors is that they paint a picture of a VERY crowded Mac desktop lineup. If they all come to fruition, we have no fewer than EIGHT Mac desktops:

Low end Mac mini
High end Mac mini
Mac Studio
24" iMac
27" iMac
27" iMac Pro
Refreshed Intel Mac Pro
AS Mac Pro

You're differentiating among types. The real lineup is:

Mac mini (Mac Studio being the high end Mac mini)
iMac
Mac Pro.

Or, if the Mac Studio is a different beast, then it's

Mac mini
Mac Studio
iMac
Mac Pro

Neither of those is crazy.

I don't think either of the proposed lineups are that different. The "Mac Studio" as rumored will be the high end Apple Silicon desktop. It may even cost as much as a Mac Pro. The Intel Mac Pro remains as a legacy machine, so, not a big deal either.

I think Apple starts out with a price, and builds out from there.

$600
$700 M1 Mac mini
$800
$900 M1 Mac mini with 2x storage SKU
$1000
$1100 Intel Mac mini
$1200
$1300 iMac 24 with 2 ports
$1500 iMac 24 with 4 ports
$1800 Intel iMac 27 base SKU
$2000 Intel iMac 27 mid-range SKU
$2300 Intel iMac 27 high end SKU
$3000
$4000
$5000
$6000 Intel Mac Pro

Maybe this Mac Studio will fill in the gigantic price hole between the iMac 5K and Mac Pro? The Apple Silicon large iMac SKUs will be going up relative to the Intel ones, probably by a lot, not a little.

A MBP14 with 6+2+14 M1 Pro is $2000. If the large iMac is a 27" 5K 120 Hz miniLED, I'd bet they price it at $2500. All the other components are the same as the base MBP14 SKU. Again, a 6+2+14 M1 Pro iMac with 27" miniLED monitor will cost $2500. Either this, or they are just going to eat half the margin they usually get with the MBP laptops, and I don't think they will.

This is the reason I think they will use the same 27" monitor in the current iMac 5K in the base SKU zt least, possibly even the midrange SKU. It's the only way it can hit $2000. The miniLED will be left to higher end SKUs at $2500 to $3500.

Thus, that leaves room for a Mac Studio at $4000. I'd hope Apple would show its cards and have it ship with a "M1 Max Duo", but rumors have been scant on that.

For the Mac mini, if it has a 6+2+14 M1 Pro model, it will take the $1100 slot, and the 8+2+32 M1 Max model will be $1800? A fully loaded Mac mini will hit $5000? Those are some pretty boutique prices for a SFF PC.

 

[Vincent Hanna]

There are many many "utility" PCs. These are the PCs with large displays that you see in front desks of businesses, in hospital rooms/carts, on secretary desks, etc. I sometimes think that these units are like a half of the PC market. Replacement cycles are ridiculous long, but they are part of the PC market. All of them will eventually just run a browser, no custom Windows software anymore. An opportunity. So, an ultra low end iMac could compete here. Like an 1920x1080 iMac 24 with an A14 and 4 GB of RAM for $600, sold only to businesses only. This is pretty far afield from Apple's wheelhouse, so no way, but I see more of these PCs than anything else.

Event thread > xMac thread > Marketshare thread.

Some things never change.

But I will say this: one week ago I did not expect the revamp of the entire Mac desktop lineup as a legitimate possibility for this event. Exciting times.

 

[DrBoar]

Regarding STEM apps. With a lot made in Linux it ought to be easy to port to MacOS as both are UNIX derivatives. The very first computer I used was a VAX computer big as a fridge, that program for visualisation of proteins 3D structure called FRODO was ported to mac a very long time ago

Regarding gaming. Apple will never be able to compete with Windows bleeding edge. (unless they would make something like the G3/G4 towers...) What Apple could do is to get consistency of performance a sort of midway between gaming PCs and game consoles. That is all games ported to MacOS would run on all M cpu/GPU, decent on M1&M2 better on Pro/MAX and best on multichip variants. Mac might be a small market share but it is also far less complicated than the windows PC market for better and worse.

 

[Vincent Hanna]

Event thread > xMac thread > Marketshare thread > Gaming thread.

Some things never change.

 

[dal20402]

This is nothing new, but for the record:

- The audience of high-end PC gamers could not be a worse fit for Apple. The things they value are literally the exact opposite of what Apple does well. Apple has no way to add value for them and command margins from them.
- iOS is the biggest casual gaming platform in the world, and in terms of economic impact in gaming the iPhone SE that will be introduced tomorrow is more important than any high-end gaming PC that will be introduced this year.
- Apple Arcade is a bid to bring that success to Apple's other platforms, and Apple Silicon in Macs will make it much easier to develop for Apple Arcade and raise the minimum performance bar at the same time.

 

[cateye]

Not that we've flown off the rails in a sidetrack here or anything, but a gentle reminder that gaming discussion belongs in the Gaming Thread, please, since all of these issues (and more) have been well-covered there. Let's keep this event-focused.

 

[Jade]

It's render time!

This is Mac Studio and Apple’s new display, coming at March 8 event

• According to people familiar with the matter who spoke with Luke Miani, the Mac Studio resembles 2 Mac minis stacked on top of each other, with silver sides and a white top with rounded edges similar to the newest MacBook Pro models
• The people, who asked to remain unnamed, tell us Mac Studio is around the same footprint as the M1 Mac mini, but about 4 inches tall
• We’re told Mac Studio is accompanied by a new display, measuring roughly 27-inches diagonally, with a similar design to the Pro Display XDR (but it’ll have slightly thicker bezels and no circular lattice pattern on the rear)
• Both Mac Studio and the new display are scheduled to launch as early as tomorrow, March 8 at Apple’s event…but the company’s plans are historically fluid and subject to change

Yeah, they had me right up until the last bit. This is either a fake or it's happening tomorrow, "historically fluid" disclaimer is not a get out of prediction card.

Edit: thicMac™ is the new xMac.

 

[dmsilev]

That render looks like someone took an existing Mini CAD model and did an "extrude" operation on the top face. And pretty much changed nothing else.

And yeah, at T-24 hours and counting, Apple has almost definitely already recorded the event and definitely definitely has already finalized the content.

 

[wrylachlan]

I’d buy that.

 

[dal20402]

It's a Iici! It's a NeXTStation! It's a Cube! It's the Trash Pro! It's... xMac!

This wouldn't have been possible without AS. The nature of performant PC GPUs meant that any Mac desktop would either be much bigger or much weaker than the still-fervent vision of Steve Jobs would suggest. Now the AS GPU will allow them to take another crack at it.

 

[Arasirsul]

Lossless compression wouldn't hurt the picture quality but wireless video would be entirely orthogonal to the monitor's ability to serve as a dock with single-cable connection, which is one of the main attractions of modern monitors.

In a world where my laptop can run all day on battery for a long day, zero cable's even better than one cable! For most people, the rest of what folks use cables for can already be done wirelessly-- bluetooth keyboards and mice and speakers and microphones, wifi ethernet, storage-attached-networks over that wifi for disks... monitor video's the one thing most folks can't do wirelessly. It's the only thing that's left for a scenario where I could walk into my office, set my laptop on the desk, don't even plug it in, and my desktop peripherals now do what they're supposed to. Pick up the laptop, go to the conference room, don't disconnect anything.

Plug the thing in at night when I'm not using it... just like my phone.

Yeah, the power users may still need the one cable life. I'll probably still be rocking the one cable life. Some folks can't even do that, and truly need the multiple USB-C sockets on their laptops. But for most Mac users? The zero cable life would be even better than the one cable life, wouldn't it?

 

[mklein]

That larger mini is weak. Integrated graphics is somewhat useless for any studio work. Plus eGPU is not supported for Apple Silicon. What market is that for?

 

[Galvanic]

That larger mini is weak. Integrated graphics is somewhat useless for any studio work. Plus eGPU is not supported for Apple Silicon. What market is that for?

Are you preregistering your "meh"?

 

[japtor]

That guy has a...spotty record to say the least. And "silver sides and a white top with rounded edges similar to the newest MacBook Pro models", what? That design feels off, mostly cause yeah it basically looks like an original Mac mini extruded up. Apple's design language from 2005 (or 2010 when the current design came out) is different from today so I'd expect some more differences than just a taller box. I mean it'll always be a box of some sort...just probably not that box.

And just had a wild thought about that 7k monitor, the retina ultrawide resolution I've wanted is 6880 across. Doubt they're getting into the ultrawide game but who knows at this point.

 

[Ben_H]

That Mac Studio + display combo is basically exactly what I would want...

...which means it's not gonna be like that.

 

[orionquest]

That larger mini is weak. Integrated graphics is somewhat useless for any studio work. Plus eGPU is not supported for Apple Silicon. What market is that for?

Who know's maybe eGPU's will be allowed by Apple again (only by certain models, while you stand on 1 leg, bending over) .

Apple gives, Apple takes away.

 

[irfoton]

It's render time!

This is Mac Studio and Apple’s new display, coming at March 8 event

• According to people familiar with the matter who spoke with Luke Miani, the Mac Studio resembles 2 Mac minis stacked on top of each other, with silver sides and a white top with rounded edges similar to the newest MacBook Pro models
• The people, who asked to remain unnamed, tell us Mac Studio is around the same footprint as the M1 Mac mini, but about 4 inches tall
• We’re told Mac Studio is accompanied by a new display, measuring roughly 27-inches diagonally, with a similar design to the Pro Display XDR (but it’ll have slightly thicker bezels and no circular lattice pattern on the rear)
• Both Mac Studio and the new display are scheduled to launch as early as tomorrow, March 8 at Apple’s event…but the company’s plans are historically fluid and subject to change

Yeah, they had me right up until the last bit. This is either a fake or it's happening tomorrow, "historically fluid" disclaimer is not a get out of prediction card.

Edit: thicMac™ is the new xMac.

what's this person's track record?

 

[dal20402]

That larger mini is weak. Integrated graphics is somewhat useless for any studio work. Plus eGPU is not supported for Apple Silicon. What market is that for?

If the thing has 2x M1 Max, these "integrated graphics" will be more powerful than all but a handful of high-end desktop GPUs.

 

[jaberg]

Yeah, the power users may still need the one cable life. I'll probably still be rocking the one cable life. Some folks can't even do that, and truly need the multiple USB-C sockets on their laptops. But for most Mac users? The zero cable life would be even better than the one cable life, wouldn't it?

That’s an interesting idea. I’ve been using an iPad Pro as an external monitor for my MBP for the past year or so. Not perfect but in general it works well enough. With iteration I can easily see a wireless monitor passing muster for most.

That larger mini is weak. Integrated graphics is somewhat useless for any studio work. Plus eGPU is not supported for Apple Silicon. What market is that for?

Emphasis mine. You’re too close to this — or at least making it too much about your needs. Such a computer would likely serve my studio very nicely. Color me interested. My next desk top might not be an all-in-one.

 

[wrylachlan]

Lossless compression wouldn't hurt the picture quality but wireless video would be entirely orthogonal to the monitor's ability to serve as a dock with single-cable connection, which is one of the main attractions of modern monitors.

In a world where my laptop can run all day on battery for a long day, zero cable's even better than one cable! For most people, the rest of what folks use cables for can already be done wirelessly-- bluetooth keyboards and mice and speakers and microphones, wifi ethernet, storage-attached-networks over that wifi for disks... monitor video's the one thing most folks can't do wirelessly. It's the only thing that's left for a scenario where I could walk into my office, set my laptop on the desk, don't even plug it in, and my desktop peripherals now do what they're supposed to. Pick up the laptop, go to the conference room, don't disconnect anything.

Plug the thing in at night when I'm not using it... just like my phone.

Yeah, the power users may still need the one cable life. I'll probably still be rocking the one cable life. Some folks can't even do that, and truly need the multiple USB-C sockets on their laptops. But for most Mac users? The zero cable life would be even better than the one cable life, wouldn't it?

For the vast majority of use cases wireless display will be a nice quality of life enhancement. But what happens to battery life when you’re driving a large display wirelessly while not plugged in. Battery life is relative to using the built in screen with the assumption that if you’re using another screen then you’re plugged in. Driving more pixels = more power draw. Transmitting those pixels wirelessly = more power draw. Compressing those pixels so that they can be transmitted within available bandwidth = more power draw.

I like the idea and I don’t disagree that the long trend will be towards something like that but I’m skeptical of the near term feasibility.

 

[THT]

I’d buy that.

You haven't seen the price yet.

Crossing my fingers that this is just the replacement for the Space Grey Mac mini, and they decided to make it big enough for a 3.5" HDD, or couple if NVMe SSD drives inside. Starting at $1300 for a 6+2+14 M1 Pro, good enough.

If it is meant to house an M1 Max Duo and it's all fan+heat sink, $4k for that option. Not for me.

 

[dal20402]

Crossing my fingers that this is just the replacement for the Space Grey Mac mini, and they decided to make it big enough for a 3.5" HDD, or couple if NVMe SSD drives inside. Starting at $1300 for a 6+2+14 M1 Pro, good enough.

If it is meant to house an M1 Max Duo and it's all fan+heat sink, $4k for that option. Not for me.

I'd bet a M1 Mac mini that Apple never makes a Mac with space for internal spinning rust again. Even for the massive Mac Pro they set aside physical cubic inches for spinning rust but outsourced the necessary parts to a third party.

 

[byrningman]

That larger mini is weak. Integrated graphics is somewhat useless for any studio work. Plus eGPU is not supported for Apple Silicon. What market is that for?

If the thing has 2x M1 Max, these "integrated graphics" will be more powerful than all but a handful of high-end desktop GPUs.

Yeah should be roughly in the same performance tier as the high end NVIDIA cards for 3D stuff. Faster at same tasks, slower at others. We still don’t know if Apple will create a dedicated GPU expansion option for Mac Pros (chiplet? Card?), to address those folks who’d be buying multiple high end GPUs. Low volume but high margin item, and maybe worth it to Apple just to complete the high end of the Mac line.

 

[THT]

Event thread > xMac thread > Marketshare thread > Gaming thread.

Some things never change.

I think it is reflective of the hardware options and software availability in the Mac platform. You don't hear people complaining much about iPhone market share or iPhone hardware options. Even with iPads, the complaints are more about software functionality than hardware options. Not to mention the Watch or AirPods either. There's like 4 Apple branded wireless headphones! And, you have Apple adjacent sets of Beats headphones with Apple wireless hardware to choose from. About 10 headphone options? Eddy Cue has influence.

For Macs, and especially the desktops, the hardware options and software availability have been such that some people are not happy with them. Some customers buy them begrudgingly, not because they love them. People would rather be happy with their options and choices. Big picture, marketshare and gaming probably takes care of most of it. How Apple gets there, who knows.

It's not 1998 anymore. Apple should endeavor to make buyers of their products as happy as possible, especially with the high dollar items.

 

[wrylachlan]

I’d buy that.

You haven't seen the price yet.

Crossing my fingers that this is just the replacement for the Space Grey Mac mini, and they decided to make it big enough for a 3.5" HDD, or couple if NVMe SSD drives inside. Starting at $1300 for a 6+2+14 M1 Pro, good enough.

If it is meant to house an M1 Max Duo and it's all fan+heat sink, $4k for that option. Not for me.

Yeah, no. Apples days of accommodating spinning rust in their designs is over and done. There’s no way in hell the Mac Studio has a space for add in HD. This is all about the thermals for an MX Max Duo.

That said, I’m not sure that the thermals for an MX Max Duo are going to be thaaaat crazy. If you can fit a single Max in a 14” MBP then dissipating twice that much heat shouldn’t be hard for a desktop.

Obviously price is a consideration with every purchase but from a design standpoint this is ticking the boxes for what I need over the next couple years.

 

[jaberg]

For the vast majority of use cases wireless display will be a nice quality of life enhancement. But what happens to battery life when you’re driving a large display wirelessly while not plugged in.

I don’t see that it has to be one or the other. Completely wireless for a quick “between meetings” stop at the desk. Plug the computer in for longer work sessions — or because you want to grab a few minutes charge time. This is analogous to the way I use my MBP now — sometimes on battery (even at my desk) and sometimes plugged in.

 

[wrylachlan]

For the vast majority of use cases wireless display will be a nice quality of life enhancement. But what happens to battery life when you’re driving a large display wirelessly while not plugged in.

I don’t see that it has to be one or the other. Completely wireless for a quick “between meetings” stop at the desk. Plug the computer in for longer work sessions — or because you want to grab a few minutes charge time. This is analogous to the way I use my MBP now — sometimes on battery (even at my desk) and sometimes plugged in.

…ehhhh… I don’t know that you can market a feature that you can’t use without draining the battery. “Here’s a cool feature that you can use every so often but don’t use it too much…” is a hard marketing sell. If you can get a full days work done without draining the battery then I think it’s fine. If using it puts you into the 4-6 hour territory I think it would be a risk to roll it out.

 

[Mhorydyn]

That said, I’m not sure that the thermals for an MX Max Duo are going to be thaaaat crazy. If you can fit a single Max in a 14” MBP then dissipating twice that much heat shouldn’t be hard for a desktop.

Obviously price is a consideration with every purchase but from a design standpoint this is ticking the boxes for what I need over the next couple years.

Something like this would tick all my boxes too. I prefer the aesthetics of my trashcan Mac Pro, but I'll take it. The M1 Pro in my wife's MBP is faster by a huge margin than anything else in my house, so even that would technically be a good upgrade for my trashcan. I would prefer 2x M1 Pro to help speed up a few infrequent tasks, but a ton depends on pricing. There's already a span of $900 CDN from the lowest end M1 Pro to the top end M1 Max (which also comes with an additional forced $500 bump from 16GB to 32GB of RAM). So maybe a span ranging up to $1500-2000 extra over the entry level for the duo variants? Speccing out the 14" MBP with the options I want (full M1 Pro, 32GB, 4TB) is already around the high end of what I want to spend, so I'm very interested to see how things shake out.

 

[stevenkan]

They conclude that it is the Mac Half Pro that's rumored by Gurman.

The correct term is "Half-AS Mac Pro™"

 

[mklein]

Yeah, the power users may still need the one cable life. I'll probably still be rocking the one cable life. Some folks can't even do that, and truly need the multiple USB-C sockets on their laptops. But for most Mac users? The zero cable life would be even better than the one cable life, wouldn't it?

That’s an interesting idea. I’ve been using an iPad Pro as an external monitor for my MBP for the past year or so. Not perfect but in general it works well enough. With iteration I can easily see a wireless monitor passing muster for most.

That larger mini is weak. Integrated graphics is somewhat useless for any studio work. Plus eGPU is not supported for Apple Silicon. What market is that for?

Emphasis mine. You’re too close to this — or at least making it too much about your needs. Such a computer would likely serve my studio very nicely. Color me interested. My next desk top might not be an all-in-one.

Well if a Mini+ serves your studio well, how does the current M1 mini NOT serve your needs? For most single-threaded tasks the M1 is nearly similar benchmarks to the Pro and Max versions.

If someone needs more horsepower, such as a studio that the current lineup isn't enough, there is no comparison between a PCI graphics card vs. integrated graphics for GPU enhanced compute. Paying $3,000 for an Intel Xeon chip in the Mac Pro is wasteful for most.

https://barefeats.com/m1-max-16-vs-intel-16.html

Sure perhaps the integrated GPU is fine with the most optimized Metal code, using only an Apple product such as Final Cut Pro, but in real world use such products as Adobe are not optimized beyond the common brands.

 

[Mhorydyn]

Well if a Mini+ serves your studio well, how does the current M1 mini NOT serve your needs? For most single-threaded tasks the M1 is nearly similar benchmarks to the Pro and Max versions.

If someone needs more horsepower, such as a studio that the current lineup isn't enough, there is no comparison between a PCI graphics card and integrated graphics for GPU enhanced compute.

https://barefeats.com/m1-max-16-vs-intel-16.html

Sure perhaps with the most optimized Metal code, using only an Apple product such as Final Cut Pro the integrated is fine, but in real world use such products as Adobe are not optimized beyond the common brands.

It's pretty easy to find cases where an M1 Pro/Max-based 'Mac Studio' would suit someone's needs whereas an M1 mini wouldn't:
-more displays (I have more displays than an M1 can handle)
-tasks benefitting from more than 16GB of RAM
-needing more GPU performance

Also, your link doesn't have anything to do with integrated vs dedicated. It's integrated vs the fasted video card you can buy from AMD that sucks back a ton of power. Since GPU performance typically scales really well, a doubling of the M1 Max is going to put it ahead of even the 6900XT in those benchmarks. Without expansion either via internal slots or external eGPUs, that's still going to be an issue for those who buy several GPUs and stuff them into the tower or those who will upgrade to the 7900XT in six months, but just being integrated is only an issue insofar as it limits expandability.

 

[jaberg]

I never claimed that the current offerings wouldn’t work for me. In fact, I’m certain I could get by with a base M1 mini if only Apple would release a monitor that I like. Preferably for less than $7K though I’ll never say never. However, I like fast computers and usually buy more desktop than I need (because I can and want to) and then hold on to them for a long time. Not everything is based on need— even business decisions. I expressed interest in the possibility of a faster, more capable option because I am interested. More to my point, I was using my studio by way of example. Not all studios, much like all pros, are in the video business. (Some aren’t in business at all.) Plenty of studios will appreciate, or require, a middle ground machine.

Finally, it’s just a model name, and a rumored one at that. It doesn’t need a direct analog to real world studios.

 

[jamoau]

That guy has a...spotty record to say the least. And "silver sides and a white top with rounded edges similar to the newest MacBook Pro models", what? That design feels off, mostly cause yeah it basically looks like an original Mac mini extruded up. Apple's design language from 2005 (or 2010 when the current design came out) is different from today so I'd expect some more differences than just a taller box. I mean it'll always be a box of some sort...just probably not that box.

I find that box visually unappealing and at least the trashcan took advantage of its shape for cooling — inadequate as it was.

 

[stevenkan]

There is a demand for bigger faster computers, and there is also a demand for better more energy efficient servers.

OMG!!! XServe rises from the dead!

 

[stevenkan]

Fixed costs, not sunk. Not trying to be pedantic, but they're totally different. Sunk costs refers to money already spent, and that money spent should be considered gone and not used to justify continuing to try and keep a product going, as in the sunk costs fallacy or throwing good money after bad. Fixed costs are costs that are paid once and are the same regardless of how many units are produced, as opposed to marginal costs when you're paying by the unit. You pay once to design an SoC, and the cost of designing it are the same whether you sell one unit or 100 million. So the more units you can sell the more you can spread that development cost. It's a lot easier to spend $100 million to design an SoC that'll go into 100 million sales than to spend that same amount of money on an SoC that'll get sold once. And Apple's definitely trying to amortize those fixed costs as much as they can. The A14, M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max all use the same performance cores, efficiency cores, GPU cores, NPU, and likely quite a bit of the uncore, "just" differing in how many of each. The M1 Pro is an M1 Max with the bottom half chopped off. The efficiency cores get reused for the S-series SiP in the Apple Watch. Now granted going from the various cores as building blocks to the different SoCs we're seeing with such a massive range in die size, performance, power, etc. is still a massive amount of design and cost, but Apple's clearly reusing everything they can to keep those costs under control.

I would love to read a good leak on how semiconductor manufacturing costs have changed over the last 20 years. "Taping out" in circuit design used to be such as significant milestone because you were literally putting tape on mylar film to be used as a photo mask, and that step was an extensive manual process that you didn't want to duplicate unless you absolutely had to. Now that everything is automated, you can make changes right up until you click "print" to make the photomasks. Not that you'd want to do this without repeating a lot of the design validation process, but 1) that's all automated, too, and 2) you can do it, even if you shouldn't.

So the conventional wisdom was that you designed as few die as possible, and you manufactured as many of those as possible. Of course that will always be true, but the math has shifted to make fewer copies of more designs more and more cost-acceptable, especially when you're Apple, and "fewer copies" is still in the millions of units.

Intel is (in)famous for having a bajillion SKUs, and not just from frequency binning. How many SKUs do they get per mask set?

So yeah, it's entirely possible that paying once for a new chassis design with reasonable marginal production costs to increase sales is an overall winning move for Apple. Depends on how many extra sales they can pick up, what the costs of that design work actually are, and how much spinning up a new production line at Foxconn (another fixed cost that doesn't depend on how many units are produced) costs.

And I have the same question about mechanical designs. When the Unibody MBP first came out I was astounded that they were individually milling each case. Then that became de riguer for premium laptops from many manufacturers, and now it's common even among non-premium products. With automated design tools and additive fabrication the costs of prototyping are plummeting, which allows Apple to try out a ton of industrial designs. I'd love to read a leak on what capabilities Apple has in-house for mechanical prototyping.

 

[dal20402]

Well if a Mini+ serves your studio well, how does the current M1 mini NOT serve your needs? For most single-threaded tasks the M1 is nearly similar benchmarks to the Pro and Max versions.

The M1 Pro has roughly twice the graphics power of the plain M1, and the M1 Max either roughly three or roughly four times the graphics power. A doubled M1 Max would have roughly eight times the graphics power of the M1. Not every workload is about single-threaded CPU performance.

If someone needs more horsepower, such as a studio that the current lineup isn't enough, there is no comparison between a PCI graphics card vs. integrated graphics for GPU enhanced compute.

https://barefeats.com/m1-max-16-vs-intel-16.html

A 2X M1 Max would be roughly on par with the 6900XT—a rare and expensive part which even most high-end desktops don't have at this point—in those same benchmarks. Your black-and-white idea that "integrated can't compete" needs some re-examination.

 

[daGUY]

...New Mac mini with M1 Pro and M1 Max, replacing the existing Intel Mac mini...

...My wildcard guess: the Apple Silicon replacement for the 27” Intel iMac. It doesn’t seem like it’s coming at this event, but I hope I’m wrong. If not, maybe WWDC makes more sense for that one, especially if it’s branded as an iMac Pro.

So, these late-breaking rumors are very interesting…it sounds like the rumored “Mac Studio” will be the replacement for both the high-end Intel Mac mini and – with the Studio Display – the 27” iMac. That actually makes a lot of sense. Plus, I’m sure the Studio Display would work with the new MacBook Pros too. So that plugs a lot of holes in the current lineup: an Apple Silicon replacement for the high-end Intel Mac mini, an Apple Silicon replacement for the 27” iMac, and a consumer-level external display.

Now I’m excited!

 

[JimCampbell]

Every time the Ach gets this excited over an Apple news event, it… never ends well. We all sit there waiting for a classic Jobsian "one more thing" but then some lame-ass music plays and a massive caption flashes up saying "SHOW'S OVER, DWEEBS!" and we're left with four new colours for Beats headphones, some mildly interesting trailers for new stuff coming to Apple TV+, and underwhelming iPad revision that Tim Apple tells us is "magical".

Spoiler

 

[Mhorydyn]

Every time the Ach gets this excited over an Apple news event, it… never ends well. We all sit there waiting for a classic Jobsian "one more thing" but then some lame-ass music plays and a massive caption flashes up saying "SHOW'S OVER, DWEEBS!" and we're left with four new colours for Beats headphones, some mildly interesting trailers for new stuff coming to Apple TV+, and underwhelming iPad revision that Tim Apple tells us is "magical".

Spoiler

Hope springs eternal! Plus, it’s more fun to speculate about dream machines than a new shade of blue for the HomePod mini. I will, of course, blame you if the xMac doesn’t show up tomorrow.

 

[THT]

Crossing my fingers that this is just the replacement for the Space Grey Mac mini, and they decided to make it big enough for a 3.5" HDD, or couple if NVMe SSD drives inside. Starting at $1300 for a 6+2+14 M1 Pro, good enough.

If it is meant to house an M1 Max Duo and it's all fan+heat sink, $4k for that option. Not for me.

Yeah, no. Apples days of accommodating spinning rust in their designs is over and done. There’s no way in hell the Mac Studio has a space for add in HD. This is all about the thermals for an MX Max Duo.

That said, I’m not sure that the thermals for an MX Max Duo are going to be thaaaat crazy. If you can fit a single Max in a 14” MBP then dissipating twice that much heat shouldn’t be hard for a desktop.

We already have the data from the M1 Max testing. A combined CPU+GPU load is about 90W. This is just straight adding Apple's advertised numbers of 30W for CPU and 60W for GPU. Anandtech measured package power of about 98W for their max power load test, which maybe includes the RAM, which is in the package.

So, 2 M1 Max dies, 8 LPDDR5 packages at 2 W per package, presumably a silicon/composite interconnect/bridge at 20 W, will be about, 2x90+8x2+20 = 216 W for the computing stuff.

Then, you have a 4 TB/USBC ports at 15W out each, 2 USBA ports at 10W out, and I'm ignoring everything else, like powering the fan(s). 4x15+2x10 = 80 W for the ports. That gets you about 300 W total. They'll need about a 300W to 320W power supply, assumed to be internal, depending on the margin they want.

The Mac mini of recent vintage has a 150 W PSU. This render by Luke Miani looks to be about 2.5 Mac mini units high, or about 4 inches. So, lo and behold, looks like Apple needs about 2x to volume for 2x the power consumed. It should be equivalent to about 28c Xeon and a Radeon Pro 6800/6900 (whichever one has 20 TFLOPS), so perf/W would be about 2x over them.

The vents around the bottom edge is probably artistic license. A small square footprint sucks for cooling design. Air needs to be drawn in by a fan, accelerated to go across radiator fins, and exhausted out. There just isn't an easy way to maximize both fan size and radiator size with it being square. If the flow was front to back, which it really should be since a lot of these will be going in server racks, they could use 2 small axial fans in the front and driving air front to back. Just a mini version of the Mac Pro. But you'd think that detailed would be leaked too.